I’ve been meaning to start a series of posts where I rewrite the commercial exchanging the man and woman’s script but keeping all of the denigrating language. I’ll start with the most recent Discover commercial where two women speak of the inept husband who failed to pay the bill but not to worry, his dumb ass is covered with their new program.

Was going to send you an email with a citation to this paper but couldn’t find a contact anywhere on the site so I’m posting it here . Might be useful

ABSTRACT: This paper critically evaluates available data on divorce and the dissolution of cohabiting unions. We find that both vital statistics and retrospective survey data on divorce after 1990 are deeply flawed, and have greatly underestimated recent marital instability. These flawed data led many analysts to conclude that divorce risk has been stable or declining for the past three decades. Using new data from the American Community Survey and controlling for changes in the composition of the married population, we conclude that there was actually a substantial increase in divorce risk between 1990 and 2008. Divorce rates have declined over the past two decades among persons under 30, but have increased among those over age 35. The post-war baby boom generation has had consistently high divorce rates from the outset, and as this generation ages we expect that overall divorce rates will begin to decline in coming decades. Lower divorce among persons born since 1980 may reflect increasing selectivity of marriage. Even among the youngest cohorts, however, the decline in divorce risk is more than offset by the increasing number of dissolutions of cohabiting unions. Thus, divorce risk has risen sharply in recent years, but if current trends continue it will level off and begin to decline over the next few decades. Nevertheless, we expect that overall union instability will continue to increase because of the rise of cohabitation.

The Deterioration of Divorce Statistics, the Rise of Divorce, and the Impact of Cohabitation on Union Dissolution, 1980-2011
By Brian Vicini at DukeUniversity

Depends on the movie, doesn’t it?
Watching old movies like “The Maltese Falcon”, “Drums Along the Mohawk” and so on with the right glasses is very interesting. It’s only been in the last 25 years that movies have become utter propaganda.

If I owned a theater, I think I’d organize “Women’s Week”. Bookend it with two movies starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. “The Quiet Man” on Sunday night, and “McLintock!” the following Saturday night. That would set the tone. “Falcon” would be worth inclusiong. I’d include “Casablanca”, too, watch that with the glasses on and see who the real alpha is. Pay attention to how Rick’s gets shut down by the Vichy at Nazi order.

Ah, dear me, I believe we will start to see more faux-chivalry love in the days ahead. Women will want to give up feminism as it becomes clearer to them that they cannot survive nor be happy without real men, but they will not want to give up their control of men. If outright control is not possible, perhaps training men in faux-chivalry will suffice. Rollo currently has an interesting article up about the history of chivalry.

@Anonymous Reader–I too enjoy watching the older films of Hollywood. They seem to show men in manlier roles. One can notice a major and obvious transformation of the characterization of men before and after the feminization of the Western world. I’m curious what other films you would suggest? I’ve been delving into other counties films lately because this wussifucation of men isn’t as prevelant elsewhere. Germany and China especially have strong male roles.

Anon Reader: “If I owned a theater, I think I’d organize “Women’s Week”. Bookend it with two movies starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. “The Quiet Man” on Sunday night, and “McLintock!” the following Saturday night. That would set the tone. ”

The best thing about “McLintock!” is where John Wayne hands the shovel to his soon-to-be-son-in-law and says “You’re gonna need this!”… and the dude breaks into a grin that looks to split his head right in two.

There is an article in Slate about a single mother by the name of Pamela Gwyn Kripke who is claiming that single motherhood is good for kids, because it gives them ‘grit’. She lives in one of the wealthier Dallas neighborhoods, so I am wondering just how much ‘grit’ her kids need on the mean streets of Highland Park (AKA ‘The Bubble’).

She forgets to mention in the article that the father had to take her to court to prevent her from running off with the children to another state. She also doesn’t mention just how she pays the bills, and affords her house, but she talks about making purses at home. I have a suspicion that child support and alimony payments may have something to do with it.

This reminded me of the merciless onslaught of Viagra “promotions” during Hockey Night in Canada a few years back.
Seriously. We’re watching HOCKEY. Do we need to be subjected every 15 minutes to some woeful sap sitting head down and dejected on a doctors table because he can’t get it up?
ARGH

Not only is chivalry under attack, but apparently, if you’re 30 something you now need a pill to get a hard-on.

Jack Reacher, the ultimate chivalry, while being a 6’5′ 250 beast of an ass kicker (referring to the books not Tom Cruise), manages to always take care of the ladies, well, yes, take care of the ladies.

@Tacomaster on January 06, 2013 at 1:03 AM, @Stingray on January 6, 2013 at 6:27 AM…
What an amazing coincidence. I got a horrible case of the flu over the Christmas-New Year’s vacation and ended up watching hordes of old movies. I started viewing them from a Red Pill perspective and it was fascinating.
I’ll name three or four, with some comments.
1) The “Dr. Kildare” series — a series of movies from the black-and-white era concerning the cases and travails of a young medical intern / transitioning to MD at a hospital, Dr. James Kildare mentored by the older wheelchair bound diagnostician, Dr. Leonard Gillespie. The most interesting film here was The People vs. Dr. Kildare where he performs emergency treatment on a female ice-skating star, who subsequently suffers paralysis in the hospital, and then sues Dr. Kildare and the Hospital for negligence. A chance remark by one of the witnesses leads Kildare and Gillespie to review the patient’s X-rays, which revealed an overlooked spinal tumor which led to the paralysis. When this is brought up in the courtroom, naturally the defendants want the chance to operate — but, if the patient declines, she is sure to recover a substantial settlement.
What is interesting here is how this is handled by the patient (a woman) and her lawyer. He wants her to decline treatment and receive the settlement, or at worst, to decline the operation until *after* the settlement, and then go elsewhere for the operation, so she can have her cake and eat it too (incidentally, gaining all *kinds* of sympathy along the way). The Red Pill moment is that she actually agrees to suspend the trial pending surgery — if the surgery works, she will drop the suit.
What a remarkable analogy to frivorce today, and how atypical the response!
2) The original Ocean’s Eleven — back when men were real men, and women were real women. The interesting thing here is the body english and the role of the sexes. In an early scene, Peter Lawford and one other actor are on adjacent sofas being serviced (massaged, in the old-fashioned sense) when a call comes in from a co-conspirator. They basically tell the girls “beat it, this is business” and as the girls leave the room, Lawford swats one of them on her behind.
Another interesting thing is that Tony Bergdorf, the group’s electrician, had been in prison for theft: however, everyone involved, including his ex-wife, protected the children’s interest by telling him that his father had been overseas. Compare that to the vicious custody fights today.
3) We see the beginning of the rot in movies such as 1960’s The Apartment with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. Plot synopsis below, followed by a few coments.
Lemmon is an employee at a major insurance company in New York, who loans his apartment out to higher-ups within the company for their illicit flings. By doing so, he gets promoted higher and higher within the company. During this time, he falls for elevator operator Shirley MacLaine, who (unbeknownst to him) is currently having an affair with the company’s personnel director, Fred MacMurray, who has promoted Lemmon to be his personal assistant.
Here’s where the plot gets complicated, and starts espousing a curious mix of red- and blue-pill values. At an office Christmas party, one of MacMurray’s other short-term-flings tells MacLaine that MacMurray is just stringing her along, as she herself was strung along, and the MacMurray will never leave his wife as promised. This is overheard by MacLaine’s secretary. Later,
As MacLaine and MacMurray are illicitly “celebrating” Christmas at Lennon’s apartment,
MacMurray gives MacLaine a $100 bill instead of a gift; she gets insulted and they quarrel.
MacMurray leaves, and MacLaine takes an overdose of sleeping pills, putting the $100 bill into an envelope. Lemmon returns to his apartment, and finds MacLaine unresponsive, and the envelope, which he hides, presuming it to be a suicide note. He enlists the aid of his next-door neighbor, a Jewish doctor, who all this time has thought the parade of women into the apartment were all going to see Lemmon. They save MacLaine (with the doctor chewing out Lemmon for being a cad); however, since MacLaine has not been home for several days, her family is worried. Her brother in law goes to her company to find out where she is, and he is told (by some of the other managers who had borrowed Lemmon’s apartment) that she is there.
He shows up to see MacLaine and Lemmon sitting down to a candlelight dinner. The brother in law assumes Lemmon has seduced her, and punches out Lemmon, much to the delight of the doctor.
Lemmon is co-opted by MacMurray into keeping MacLaine’s suicide attempt quiet; in the meantime, Lemmon has developed feelings for MacLaine and quits his job rather than participate in MacMurray’s debauchery. MacMurray’s secretary calls his wife to tell him, not only about MacLaine’s affair with MacMurray, but also others, including her *own* — her call is spite at having been pumped and dumped, and then put in a job where she was forced to watch all of her replacements being used as well.
MacMurray is thrown out of his house by his wife, and requests the key to the apartment once again. Lemmon agrees, since he is moving out of the apartment anyway since he quit his job.
The movie ends with Shirley MacLaine and Lemmon sharing a bottle of bubbly, playing gin amidst the movie boxes.
As I said there are both red-pill and blue-pill elements here. The overall structure is very red-pill, particularly in the matter of dalliances at the office, as in Mad Men; further, MacMurray is a classic alpha. Further, traditional attitudes toward gender roles are seen by the attitude of the doctor (and his wife), as well as MacLaine’s brother in law punching out Lemmon. However, there are strong blue pill elements here, as the movie shows Lemmon, the blue pill “nice guy,” as getting the girl from the alpha. Further, the movie implicitly condemns MacMurray’s unfaithfulness, as he gets thrown out of his house: but Shirley MacLaine, who also was a participant in the affair, not only gets to play victim and get White Knighted by Jack Lemmon, but her moral culpability for sleeping around, nor her continued attractiveness as a candidate for a committed LTR partner by Lemmon, are questioned.
Was this movie the beginning of the cultural turn towards the hamster-powered Carousel?

Notice also that her tone is mocking his (rightly) possessive frame and that the add is also portraying the possessively framed man as impotent and irrelevant? Call me “paranoid” but I have seen behind the curtain of the mass-marketing and the depths they will scrape in driving home not only their product but their worldview.

>>I also note that “Father Knows Best” was recognized as sarcasm (not documentary) back in the sixties: Ruitenbeek wrote about it in a book called The Male Myth.

I was one of the regular watchers, along with family and friends. And, no one I knew considered it to be sarcasm. We thought it was a great show. Maybe people who were divorced in those days had a different view?

I was one of the regular watchers, along with family and friends. And, no one I knew considered it to be sarcasm. We thought it was a great show. Maybe people who were divorced in those days had a different view?

When I was a little kid, FKB, Dobie Gillis, Leave It To Beaver were all in syndication on the cable stations. All those were good shows, with father characters who could be firm without being a hardass, who handled situations with an alpha air, never letting emotions trump reason. The mother characters were all pleasant and feminine, and took pride in the appearance of themselves and their offspring.

I don’t watch tee vee any longer, and don’t know if these shows are still being aired or not, but I never took them as parody. If they’re unrealistic, they’re still the ideal to which people used to strive toward.

Yet another reason to never watch tv. How many people do you think failed to notice how much of a bitter ungrateful wife she is and fell on the floor laughing? Then after laughing at his pathetic attempt to defend her, went back to their scheduled programming and criticized one of the characters who they felt needed to “man up”, failing to understand the perfect example they had just witnessed of a man losing value in his wife’s eyes for “manning up”?

Men as idiots, woman as saviour in TV and the movies has long been a pet peeve of mine. It’s so pervasive that it gets in the way of all logic at times.

I recently watched Journey to the Center of the Earth from 2008. Brendan Frasier and the teen who plays his nephew are portrayed as complete idiots at the beginning of the movie. They are saved and outsmarted by a cute, intelligent, competent and kick-ass Icelandic woman who agrees for an outrageous fee to be their guide.

Here’s where the illogic REALLY comes in. In a scene inside a mine the Icelandic girl, who is maybe 100 lbs soaking wet and has the least upper body strength of the three characters, swings into action to pump a railroad pumpcar with the two guys as passengers. This is against all logic just for the sake of a You Go Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrl® moment. I guffawed out loud. Though his sort of thing has become so pervasive, I still can’t believe it at times.

But it gets better. My wife and sister-in-law we’re snickering and trading “give me a break” looks often. When I asked what was up, they said as soon as it go hot in the cave the woman character is stripped down to a v-neck shirt with a button allowing for just the right amount of cleavage. We all agreed that yeah that’s become a trademark cliche in movies and TV. We all had a laugh.

But, when I pointed out the portaryal of the males being idiots and the woman being sexy, strong and smart, there was no “Ha! Yeah, you’re right.” There were instead denials, and “Yes, buts…”. It was quite an eye opener to see two smart women circle the wagons in defense of a persistent portrayal of men as weak and stupid. Yet, we could all agree on the silliness of the female character’s tits having to be shown just the right amount to be titillating but not sleazy.

And yeah, I know it was just Journey to the Center of the Earth which was pretty bad overall and not meant in any way to be realistic, but this is exactly the type of mass market film that a lot of people see, and serves up and reinforces the weak, stupid man, strong woman meme.

I went and found the passage in question. A careful re-reading suggests his issue was more with pop culture dads in general than that particular one…

The Diminishing Father

The old days have gone. The old ways are in flux. Nowhere is this more evident than in the weakening position of the father. Once he was pictured as the authority in the home; now he is portrayed as its butt.

This is not entirely a contemporary phenomenon. Ever since the United States went from an agricultural to an industrial economy — beginning as early as the 1830’s in the Northeast — father has been a bit of a joke: his economic mobility outstripped his social adaptability. …father remained as he was born, stubbornly lower-middle-class. …father has been shown to be inept, clumsy, and ill-at-ease in the world. … Father, for all his naive informality or outright crudity, stands firm; he is his old-fashioned self, retaining his established identity, as it were, rather than trying to accommodate himself to the group into which his new wealth has brought him entry.

In contrast to attitudes which endured until the 1920’s, we hear little now of father’s stubborn resistance to social grace and aesthetic appreciation. Today, we laugh at father’s incapacity to govern his family. No longer does he command attention and deference by the mere sound of his voice. No longer does he exemplify success and achievement. In fiction, particularly in the mass media of comic strip and TV, “Father knows best”, is only a sarcasm. He is the person who makes ludicrous blunders, especially in dealing with people, and who is rescued from the consequences of his ineptitude by his wife, or even by his adolescent son or daughter. Father has lost his traditional position in the family structure.
– Hendrick M. Ruitenbeek (1967)

The diminishing father trend has certainly continued. Tim Allen is now “The Last Man Standing” amongst his wife and three daughters. His son-in-law is ultra-liberal on everything; and at work at the sporting goods store (Manly Man Country if there ever was such a thing in the suburban landscape), his two main male companions are a loony-tunes older guy and a dufus young kid.

In “Malibu Country”, Reba McIntyre and Lily Tomlin are the strong woman daughter/mother head of a family with practically no men in sight; the dumb teenage son not counting in the least.

I would like to put forth two instances where guys act like men, lol. See these youtube links.
First. Kate Mara, young, beautiful actress on the Craig Ferguson show. Craig shows an example of game. He’s constantly making joking, cutting remarks at Kate, with an occasional compliment, and she in return is constantly and heavily flirting with him the entire time.
And a TV series, haha, where a guy finds out his girlfriend had killed a teenage girl as part of a plot to achieve her own goals. He acts almost like a character from an old movie, where men were men. Not the wimps and idiots constantly on today’s tv.

Join Duke students for a day of reflection upon the experiences of Durham women as they relate to the fight for human rights, activism and equality.

#genderstillmatters

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A DUKE STUDENT, OR ON CAMPUS TO PARTICIPATE

You can participate by posting a status about how and where you recognize that gender still influences perceptions in the workplace, society, schools, and beyond while using the hashtag: #genderstillmatters

Help make this an incredible day of reflection and recognition for the entire Duke and Durham community!

Kaleidoscope Activism Day is made possible thanks to a collaboration with the Pauli Murray Project, an initiative of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute and is supported by Duke Service Learning.

I politely declined the invitation, noting to the organizer:

Also, as a warning, your harshest critics will likely note that the current graphic suggests women want to grab men (as the bull symbolizes) by their testicles (where the female hand intersects the bull) and squeeze them for all they are worth … or grow a pair of their own … the graphic could definitely use improvement and a thorough review before public release.